News & Events

Calendar Archive: 2004-2005 Events

Fall 2004

September 7, 2004 at Illini Union

Graduate Student Information Fair

This event will formally welcome all new graduate students to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and help orient them to services and resources available on campus and in the community. 

September 14, 2004 at Native American House

Fall Open House. 

Please come and say hello to some of the faculty, students, and staff at the House and ask about what is planned for the year.

September 15, 2004 at Levis Faculty Center

“On & Off the Res with Charlie Hill”

Comedian Charlie Hill will screen his film “On & Off the Res with Charlie Hill” and follow the film with a brief discussion and performance.

September 16, 2004 at Native American House

Brown Bag Presentation:  Dr. Larry Emerson, NAH Post-Doctoral Fellow

Title: Indigeneity and Decolonization

September 18, 2004 at Illini Union

2004 Multicultural Youth Conference on the campus of the University of Illinois

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Multicultural Youth Conference is a one-day event made up of small sessions designed to get you thinking about your education beyond high school.

September 28, 2004

Reading Group: “Yuchi Travels: Up and Down the Academic ‘Road to Disappearance’” from Native Voices: American Indian Identity and Resistance.

September 30, 2004 at Library and Information Science

"Who Lost the Youth of Leech Lake?: American Indians and Mainstream Media"
By Scott Lyons, Assistant Professor of Writing & Rhetoric Native American Studies, Syracuse University

In April 2004, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune ran a three-part series, "The Lost Youth of Leech Lake," chronicling a reservation youth culture largely defined by violent crime, chemical addiction, mental illness, and a general and growing sense of despair. Feedback to the stories was unusually hot, with no fewer than three public demonstrations at Leech Lake Reservation (Minnesota) protesting the negativity of representation of Native youth. The series also had its supporters, as evidenced by numerous letters-to-the-editor and op-eds praising its "realism," while author Larry Oakes spent weeks defending his desire to "tell the truth" and emphasizing his sincere concern for Native people.

Obviously, the series hit a nerve. Why? This presentation will examine the "Lost Youth" controversy in the larger historical, cultural, and rhetorical contexts of non-Indians writing about Indian peoples, as well as the more immediate situation of Leech Lake youth today. Three general questions will be pursued. First, what kinds of stories typically get told when non-Natives write about Natives? Second, why do particular narratives tend to persist over others? Third, how do written representations connect with "reality": history, politics, and actually existing Indian youth?

October 12, 2004

Reading Group

Introduction and chapter two from Indians in Unexpected Places by Philip J. Deloria.

October 21, 2004 at Native American House

Brown Bag Presentation:  Jennifer McCann, Doctoral Student in Educational Policy Studies

Title: Max Jones and the Warroad Indians

November 12, 13, and 14, 2004 American Indian Center

51st Annual Powwow at the University of Illinois at Chicago

Experience Native American culture, music and dance at the American Indian Center's 51st Annual Powwow November 12-14 at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

December 2, 2004 at Asian American Studies

Brown Bag Presentation: Dr. Tony Clark, NAH Post-Doctoral Fellow

Title: And so It was Not All Over When Black Elk Spoke: Roots of Red Power in (Trans)National Organization, 1891-1923

December 2, 2004 at University YMCA

Art Night - Music, Food, Drinks and Dancing plus Painting,Photography, Poetry-Readings, Sculptures, Videos, y mucho mas! This is an NAH, Native American Cultural Programming Fee and Red Roots co-sponsored event

December 3, 2004 at Native American House

Presenter:  Curtis Muhammad

Presentation: Open Dialogue with Curtis Muhammad, producer of the film "The Underground Railroad in Mexico"

Spring 2005

January 29, 2005 at Levis Faculty Center

Strong Medicine Band

The band from Oneida, WI will be performing a concert featuring contemporary music with an Oneida influence as well as traditional dancing and powwow music. This event is sponsored by Red Roots and paid for by the Student Cultural Programming Fee.

January 29, 2005 at Levis Faculty Center

Strong Medicine Band

The band from Oneida, WI will be performing a concert featuring contemporary music with an Oneida influence as well as traditional dancing and powwow music. This event is sponsored by Red Roots and paid for by the Student Cultural Programming Fee.

February 8, 2005

Reading Group

Discussions will focus on Chapter 2, "Pocahontas: The Hostage Who Became Famous" and Chapter 4,"Sacagawea: The Making of a Myth." Both of these chapters are from the book Sifters:  Native American Women's Lives, edited by Theda Perdue.

February 17, 2005 at Asian American Studies Program

Brown Bag presentation: Don Tenoso

Title:  A Conversation with Don Tenoso, Lakota multi-media artist, museum consultant, Artist-in Residence at the Native American House.

March 10, 2005

Brenda Child – Associate Professor, American Studies and American Indian Studies, University of Minnesota

Title of Presentation: "My Grandfather's Knocking Sticks: Labor and Gender in Ojibwe History."

The University of Illinois History Department will host its Sixth Annual Graduate Symposium on Women's and Gender History, March 10-12, 2005.The conference, entitled "Intersecting Gender in the Academy and Beyond," is part of activities on campus in recognition Women’s History Month and will feature graduate students from 30 institutions worldwide who will give papers on a diverse set of topics concerning gender and women’s history. 

March 12, 2005 at Spurlock Museum

Gayle Ross - Nationally renowned Cherokee storyteller and author

Gayle Ross's visit is sponsored in part by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency. Her visit is part of a series of annual American Indian performances planned by the Spurlock Museum in honor of Reginald and Gladys Laubin.

March 14-15, 2005 at Illini Union Building

2005 Community of Scholars Conference "Excelling Through Scholarship in a Redefined Democracy"

The conference will feature SPI, DFI, SROP, Graduate College fellows, and other underrepresented scholars to share insights about life in the academy and their contributions to their diverse areas of research. 

Keynote Address:  Constance Rice, co-director of The Advancement Project

Plenary Address:  Dr. Carlos Munoz, Prof. Emeritus, University of California at Berkeley

March 15, 2005 at Levis Faculty Center

Wilma Mankiller

"The Changing Role of Native American Women"

Wilma Mankiller is an author, activist, and former principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. Her roots are planted deep in the rural community of Mankiller Flats in Adair County, OK, where she has spent most of her life.  In 1969, when American Indian activists occupied Alcatraz Island to dramatize the injustices their people had suffered, Mankiller's brothers and sisters joined the occupation and Mankiller experienced a call to action, and she hasn't stopped since.  Mankiller was the founding director of the Cherokee Nation Community Development Department.  In 1987, she was elected to serve as the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, and was overwhelmingly re-elected in 1991.

She has been honored with many awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She has published several works, including, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People, and co-edited, A Readers' Companion to the U.S. Women’s History.  She recently completed a book of interviews of Native women, Every Day Is a Good Day: Reflections of Contemporary Indigenous Women.

This event is sponsored by the Martin Luther King, Jr. Commenmoration Committee

March 17, 2005 at Law School Auditorium

Should He Stay or Should He Go? Retiring The Chief

This event, sponsored by the SBA 1L Representatives and co-sponsored by the Native American Law Students Association (NALSA), is an informative lecture and discussion about the university's controversial symbol, "Chief Illiniwek."  Reflecting upon both the historical and contemporary implications of university sponsorship of the "Chief," Dr. Joseph Gone (Gros Ventre), a graduate of the doctoral program in clinical psychology at UIUC and currently Assistant Professor of Psychology and American Culture at the University of Michigan, will recount his first-hand experience in the collective efforts of local Native American activists to retire the mascot.

Read a published essay by Dr. Gone explaining his rationale for retiring the Chief.

March 31, 2005 at La Casa Cultural Latina

Brown Bag Presentation: Rachel Leibowitz, Doctoral Student, Landscape Architecture

Title: PreConstructing the "Center of the Navajo World": Architectural Style and the New Deal in Window Rock

April 5, 2005

Reading Group

Readings will include Waterlily by Ella Deloria or Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer: A Story of Survival by Alison Adelle Hedge Coke.

April 19, 2005 at the Humanities Lecture Hall, IPRH

The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities presents “The Future of Ethnic Studies at UIUC: A Panel Discussion”

Panelists

May 14, 2005 at Native American House

Congratulatory Ceremony

The Native American House invites all American Indian students and their families to participate in the NAH 2005 congratulatory program.